Lost In Space

Gravity

I think I’ve made it clear that I’m not much of a sci-fi fan, and in particular I’m not really a fan of the kind of special effects-driven sci-fi blockbusters that seem to be more and more prevalent in today’s movie landscape. And why is this? Well, I guess it’s mostly because so much of today’s science fiction asks us to be passively entertained by overblown spectacle, and doesn’t invite us to feel any sort of emotion other than “Hey, that’s pretty cool.” Fortunately Alfonso Cuaron, the writer/director who brought us Children of Men is back, and has given us a film that grabs you by the throat, and forces you to feel a whole wide range of gripping emotions, while also providing some seamless special effects that are, well, pretty cool.

Gravity begins with an extended tracking shot (or perhaps floating shot), that sees astronauts Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) miles above Earth’s atmosphere, in the middle of a routine repair outside of their space station. They’re then informed that the Russian’s have used a missile to destroy one of their own space stations, and the debris could be headed towards them. This of course happens, and the two astronauts are sent hurtling through space after a chaotic explosion tears the space station apart. This then leads to a spaceborne fight for survival as the two free-floating astronauts are forced to find some way of not dying an inevitable space death.

I must admit that I did not see this movie in Imax, nor 3-D. Which I am now regretting since it seems like every review of Gravity has said something to the effect of “You’re not really seeing this movie unless you see it in 3-D on a giant-ass screen”. Yet, regardless of that, because of the high amount of craft and care that’s been put into the film on a technical level, I still felt completely immersed in every moment of this film. And I don’t think that’s a feat to be scoffed at, considering that having a movie set entirely in space doesn’t quite have the same allure as when Kubrick unleashed 2001 on the world all those years ago.

Yet, Gravity somehow manages to evoke the kind of awe and wonder that space travel should evoke. And at the same time, it also captures the incredible terror of what it’d be like to be stranded out in the unforgiving blackness of outer space, which to me seems like literally the scariest fucking thing a human being could experience. But that’s what makes this film so exhilarating. I actually left the theater feeling as though I’d just experienced something that I’d never experienced before. And how often does that happen?

Now, perhaps not seeing the film through the tint of 3-D glasses or on an enormous screen did cause me to pick up on a few of Gravity‘s flaws. Obviously, from a scientific standpoint there are a number of moments that force you to suspend disbelief, and this seems even more apparent after reading articles like this one and this one. Also, the Sandra Bullock character’s backstory seems a bit undercooked, while some of the dialogue is a bit clunky, though the Cloon-dog’s affable charm remains unflappably intact. But these quibbles are tiny dots in a film that’s full of huge, awe-inspiring moments that also feel oddly intimate and human at the same time. Honestly, I hardly ever see movies more than once in theaters, but I think I’ve got to plunk down the money to see how awesome this thing looks in 3-D and on a giant-ass screen.

Shocktober: Day 4

Jeeper’s Creepers (2001)

It’s always tiring when a horror franchise decides to milk the same character up to the point of double-digit sequels. Does Freddy Krueger need to kill teenagers over the course of three decades? Is it really worth the effort to send Jason Vorhees or Leprechaun to space? That’s why it’s always refreshing when someone decides to make a new monster with a new mythology. Jeepers Creepers has received mixed opinions for mixed reasons. It doesn’t help that it was helmed by the highly controversial Victor Salva (more on that later), but you have to give it props for being original. “The Creeper” can hang with the baddest of the bad, from Leatherface to Michael Myers… Do I smell a spinoff?

Trish (Gina Philips) and her older brother Darry (Justin Long) are driving home for spring break through the Florida countryside. What appears to be a seemingly mundane road trip is soon interrupted by a mysterious driver that tries to the run the siblings off the road. Letting the vehicle pass, Trish and Darry seem to be in the clear, whoo, that could’ve been bad. Except that later they see the same truck pulled off near a shack where a man in black is chucking a wrapped body into a large sewer pipe. Channeling their inner Scooby Doo, Trish and Darry investigate only to a find hundreds of bodies sewn together in a chapel, missing certain parts. They flee the scene and ask around town until they meet a woman named Jezelle (Patricia Belcher) who knows the secret. It turns out that this mysterious driver is an immortal creature dubbed: “The Creeper”, who every twenty-third spring hunts for twenty-three days. It does this in order to harvest organs so that it can continue to survive. Ay yi yi!

The shocker moments are big and the creeper is a uniquely creepy adversary. Sadly, there’s an even creepier story behind the filmmaker. Victor Salva began his career producing the 1986 low budget horror film Something in the Basement which attracted the attention of Francis Ford Coppola. In turn, Coppola funded Salva’s next film Clownhouse (1989). The controversy comes in when it was discovered that Salva had sex with one of his actors, a 12 year old boy. Salva pled guilty and served 15 months in prison. You think that would kill a director’s career but with persistence and the help of Coppola, Salva found his way back in to the industry. Yuck, if there was ever a case of trying to separate the artist from their art. I still like the film but it’s not easy to say that. It’s disturbing sometimes how much more terrifying the real world can be than make believe.

When will PC’s and Macs get along?

T3: The Breaking Bad Special

As implied by my Dexter finale review, “Felina,” Breaking Bad‘s final episode, was actually not disappointing somehow. And while sure, you could argue the merits of focusing criticism on one episode of a serialized story like this, we felt it was meaty enough to talk about for 45 minutes or so. After all, something like 10 million people watched this episode, more than any before it. Which makes me wonder, how many marathoned the whole series? Isn’t it weird this show became a big deal in it’s last few weeks?

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Shocktober: Day 3

The Others (2001)

You probably remember The Others best from when it was parodied in the immortal classic Scary Movie 3, where a creepy little girl is revealed to be Michael Jackson. How do those films manage to stay so timely? Anyways, The Others is your typical “Spooky ghost/spooky kid story” but with a few twists and turns. What intrigued me the most was the knowledge that this film had a twist ending. As a horror fan, it wasn’t easy avoiding that twist ending for so many years. Was it worth the wait? Sure, why not?

Set in 1945 on the island of Jersey (A British Crown dependency off the coast of Normandy), The Others is about Grace Stewart (Nicole Kidman), a deeply religious woman caring for her two children in a remote country house, while her husband Charles (Christopher Eccleston) is at war. Grace’s children suffer from a rare disease, xeroderma pigmentosa, characterized by an extreme sensitivity to sunlight. Thus, Grace must take special care in running the house. A trio of new servants arrive; Bertha, a nanny (Fionnula Flanagan), an elderly gardner named Tuttle (Erick Sykes), and a young mute Lydia (Elaine Cassidy) and not long after strange phenomena begins around the house.

The Others goes for a less is more approach, which I can appreciate. The children make contact with some kind of “other” entity but it’s never flat out shown, just suggested. Additional tension comes from Grace and the strict quality in which she dishes out mom justice. I was just as scared of her as anything else and with good cause. When we’re not being unnerved my Grace’s acidity, were being unnerved by the creaks and squeaks of the old country house. faint sobs echo, things appear to move when they shouldn’t be moving, classic.

[toggle title_open=”Major Spoilers” title_closed=”Major Spoilers” hide=”yes” border=”yes” style=”default” excerpt_length=”0″ read_more_text=”Read More” read_less_text=”Read Less” include_excerpt_html=”no”]Chances are anyone who has wants to see The Others has already seen it so here’s how it ends: They’re all dead. Everybody in the movie is already dead and “The Others” are the current not-dead individuals living in the house. I couldn’t say that I didn’t see it coming but it’s a clever twist on a tired formula. Basically, Grace was once so crazy that she smothered both her children with a pillow and then shot herself. She thought it was all a hallucination or a dream, guess again. The servants are former employees of the house many years ago and Grace’s husband (who returns to the house for a brief time) died in the war. Kind of a downer but it’s a the best part of the whole movie.

Apart from the twist ending, The Others is fairly standard. Though I do appreciate it going for atmosphere over gore or cheap scares. After this writer/director Alejandro Amenabar went on to direct the highly acclaimed The Sea Inside and Nicole Kidman went on to marry Keith Urban. So it almost worked out for everybody in the end.

Playtime is fun!

Mechanical Bullshit

Kings of Leon – Mechanical Bull

I’m tired of this shit. Ever since that fuckin’ “Use Somebody” song everything has been downhill. This band used to have swagger, melody, they used to be fun. Now Kings of Leon is the official soundtrack to beer swilling, Abercrombie and Fitch wearing, teens with hot problems. Remember when KoL were a bunch of dirty looking hippies that played garage rock? Songs like “Molly’s Chambers” and “Four Kicks” were keyed up fist pumpers I was proud to blast in my shitty Dodge Stratus.

Even the band’s ballads in those days had a backbone. 2003’s “California Waiting” may be KoL at their most poignant and potent. Because of the Times was the last KoL album I liked. That was six years and over three albums ago. These days it’s all four chord pabulum, nothing that challenges or engages the listener in any particular way.

Before I continue this urine stream of sadness I will say one thing, I like the single. I don’t love it, but “Supersoaker” was enough for me to at least humor Mechanical Bull. So I can at least recommend the first three minutes and fifty seconds of this album. The rest feels just as mechanical as its namesake. Like a bunch of robots who don’t know what true emotion is attempted to write rock songs. Take the song “Rock City”, are you fucking kidding me? They named a song “Rock City”?!?

Maybe Mechanical Bull is better than Come Around Sundown, but that’s like saying being stabbed is better than being shot. Yet somehow, this band remains in the limelight. “Wait for Me” is alternative radio’s official selection for the sappy ballad of the month and all I can do is shake my head. It saddens me that this is KoL supposedly returning to their rock roots. Mechanical Bull is a soulless statue with no shapes or features. KoL used to cut like a knife, now their more like a spoon. You never bring a spoon to a knife fight.

Favorite Tracks: “Supersoaker”

Take My Ex-Wife, Please

Enough Said

There aren’t a lot of things that I regret not writing about on this blog, because come on, we already write about enough stuff that no one cares about. However, there is one post I do wish I had written when it was relevant, and that’s that I wish I had written an R.I.P. for the great James Gandolfini when he passed away last June. And yes, I do have an excuse, which is that I was driving from Seattle to Northern California literally the entire day that it happened, but still, I wish I’d put aside some time to reflect on the man’s passing. Because oddly enough, he died when I was right in the middle of re-watching all of The Sopranos. And I don’t want to get too bogged down with this, but I’ll just say that there’s still no doubt in my mind that Gandolfini’s work on The Sopranos is the defining performance in the history of television, and deserves to be marveled at for decades to come. So with that long-winded bit of preamble out of the way, I guess I should talk about the breezy little film that bears Gandolfini’s second-to-last performance.

Enough Said centers on Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a middle-aged mausseuse who finds herself at a dinner party one night, and happens to stumble in to two chance encounters. One is with Marianne (Catherine Keener), a fellow divorcee who takes up Eva’s offer to be her masseuse, which eventually leads to the two of them becoming close friends. The other chance encounter happens between her and Albert (Gandolfini), which leads to an unconventional romance that eventually starts to bloom between the two of them. However, Albert and Eva’s relationship is tested once Eva finds out that Marianne’s husband whom she’s been bitching about constantly turns out to be (wuh-oh) Albert, and Eva begins doubting everything she’s ever liked about him.

Now I would completely understand if you rolled your eyes at that last plot development, because it does seem a little hokey compared to everything else going on in this film. However, I think if you’re willing to forgive this sitcom-y plot devise, there’s still plenty to enjoy about Enough Said. Which I realize seems kind of weird to say “Oh yeah, if you just ignore the entire premise of the film, you’ll be good to go.” But honestly, how often do you go to see a small-scale character driven indie because of the plot?

From having seen this film along with 2009’s Please Give, I can say that writer/director Nicole Holofcener has a pretty keen ear for dialogue that mixes comedy with some of the more tragic aspects of modern life. And though the film often embodies the nobility of trudging through middle age, it’s nice to see a film that authentically captures what it is to fall in love while approaching your latter years, and do it with a nice whiff of optimism. Because God knows the other two movies I saw this year that tackled this subject (Before Midnight, Blue Jasmine), did it in a fairly depressing manner. And even though the film does end on a fairly ambiguous note, Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfus make for the kind of wise-cracking couple you can realistically believe in.

I’ll admit that there are a few scenes that fall a little flat towards the second half of the film once the more farcical aspects of the plot start to rear their head. However, the performances always keep the movie grounded, as Julia Louis-Dreyfus does a superb job of handling the comedic and dramatic sides of her character in what is surprisingly the first time she’s shown up in a movie since 1997’s Deconstructing Harry. Keener’s character is maybe a bit underwritten, but she does her best with it, and Toni Collette and Ben Falcone are very funny as Eva’s quibbling married friends. And then there’s James Gandolfini, who radiates the kind of warmth and understated comedic chops that we only occasionally got to see all those years he was on TV. I just wish we could’ve seen a little bit more of the man’s impressive depth as an actor on the silver screen.

Also, this is completely innocuous, but Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s character’s ex-husband is played by Toby Huss. So if you’re a Seinfeld fan, I guess you could imagine this movie as being some sort of alternate universe in which Elaine Benes ends up marrying The Wiz.

Shocktober: Day 2

Session 9 (2001)

Session 9 is not an amazing movie, the budget is low, it has no stars (unless you consider Josh Lucas and a pre-CSI Miami David Caruso stars), and yet it always manages to make its way into the conversation of “Best Horror Films of the 2000s”. It has a cult following, and although I don’t consider myself a member of that cult I do recognize and appreciate the storytelling of that cult. Session 9 turns a little into a lot, which is admirable when you consider how bloated this genre really is.

Session 9 follows an asbestos crew, including: Josh Lucas, David Caruso and Peter Mullan (who often steals the show) as they begin work restoring an abandoned insane asylum (filmed at a real insane asylum). They find a series of tapes from a former patient with multiple personalities, most notably the mysterious Simon who does not appear until Session 9. Soon enough, crew members disappear, we descend into the mysteries of a former patient, and characters begin to question their own sanity. It’s a slow burn with subtle scares that drip with a decrepitly spooky atmosphere.

Session 9 is directed by Brad Anderson (The Machinist, Transsiberian) who despite his blurry wikipedia profile pic is worth talking about in the realm of indie filmmaking. Though he tends to gravitate towards the thriller genre, I wouldn’t define him by that. What I’ve enjoyed in Anderson films like The Machinist or the underrated Vanishing on 7th Street is his skill to develop relatable characters in fantastic situations without the story descending into melodrama. Spectacle never takes precedent over the characters in Anderson’s film (at least his good ones) which keeps the audience focused and intrigued. Character issues outside the story are just as much at the forefront as supernatural phenomena. How one character is dealing with a romantic relationship outside of work, or a new baby. It’s these attempts to breathe life into the characters that makes everything else that more significant.

It’s hard to talk about Session 9 without spoiling anything but it’s worth seeing. Sometimes we get more questions then answers which can make the story confusing but it’s an interesting story nonetheless. Once again, I have to applaud Peter Mullan’s performance, he really should get more significant roles. Plus it’s got Josh Lucas and he’s only kind of an asshole.

It’s shoot-yourself-in-the-head chic!